A Duty of Revenge

Contents

Foreword

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Thirteen

Fourteen

Fifteen

Sixteen

Seventeen

Eighteen

Nineteen

Twenty

Twenty-One

Twenty-Two

Twenty-Three

Twenty-Four

Twenty-Five

Twenty-Six

Twenty-Seven

Twenty-Eight

Twenty-Nine

Thirty

Thirty-One

Thirty-Two

Thirty-Three

Thirty-Four

Thirty-Five

Thirty-Six

Thirty-Seven

Thirty-Eight

Foreword

Food for Thought

By the time any police officer has twelve months’ service under their belts, they will have a handful of sad, funny, frightening or just downright crazy tales to tell. By the time they retire, they’ll have hundreds – and they love to tell them. A large proportion of these tales extol the positive virtues of the central character as daring, astute, tough, cunning, funny – an amazing array of traits can help describe a good copper. Other tales, however, get repeated because the main player was useless, frightened, cynical, thick, a drunk, a bully or bent.

The stories always start in the relatively small geographical area where it happened – in or near the local nick. The best stories spread more widely – throughout several stations, the division, the force and further. They are recirculated over and over again – literally for years, subtly changing as things are added, new words said or even different people appear. Fiction built on fact. A few stories become part of local police folklore and their main characters legends, helping create a local policing culture. Ask any copper who has moved around stations and departments how many different cultures they have had to adapt to.

Then we come to a second set of stories.

These are played out in the endless diet of high-octane cop shows on TV, and in films and books. Many officers can’t bear to watch their TV counterparts, or if they do, ruin the experience for their families with a running critique of the shows’ plot holes and endless comments such as – That would never happen. The stereotypical modern TV cop, far removed from Dixon of Dock Green, may tarnish their own image of their chosen career – fashioned by that local folklore and culture. A few others actually identify with and mimic their TV heroes. Whatever the effect on serving officers, there is little doubt that this drip-feed of fictional crime, criminals and cops fuels a wider cultural view of policing.

Finally, there’s a third set.

Stories that can only be told by the people who actually played a part and who must promise to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. The storytellers are even cross-examined to ensure accuracy. A story recorded word for word, backed up by sworn documentary evidence and scientific fact.

These stories appear in the newspapers, on the radio and TV news, with some even ending up as documentaries or films. For the most controversial, only a public inquiry can be seen to get to the whole truth. Think of the Yorkshire Ripper, Brady and Hindley, Fred and Rosemary West – an endless list of true crimes, with a cast of real characters etched into the nation’s subconscious.

These stories help shape the nation’s view of our police officers and their forces. Who hasn’t formed a view of The Met through the murder of Stephen Lawrence, or of South Yorkshire through the Hillsborough Disaster? But even under this intense scrutiny, we are always left with question marks. What really happened? Where is the body? Who gave the order? Why didn’t she speak up sooner? Was the confession lawfully obtained? Whose fault was it?

In reality, is it even possible to answer all of the questions? Where do the answers lie?

In any well-investigated, serious and complex crime, there will genuinely be some unanswerable questions. Not every conundrum can be explained. But sometimes the truth is deliberately hidden. Dodgy deals and sordid secrets do exist. Those secret parts of major crimes are told – but only in hushed tones amongst trusted friends.

True justice can only be delivered within the rule of law and in my experience nearly always is. But this story is about revenge – justice taken, not delivered. As you will see, even the main characters involved never knew the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Only I did.

Matt Darnley

Detective Superintendent (Retired)

One

That Night

02:00 Thursday, 10th December 1998

Spitting did not come naturally to Anne Beedham. Her initial idea had been to try a head-butt, but even in her panic she’d worked out that would hurt her more than her attacker. Spitting was the only form of attack left, as she couldn’t move her arms or legs. Her spittle landing on the only part of the man’s face that was visible, his eyes, gave her a momentary sense of satisfaction, but the stinging slap that followed jolted her back to reality. Anne Beedham was a suburban, middle-class wife and mother, and being struck was as alien to her as spitting, but within the last hour she had found herself in a world she had only ever seen on the TV or films.

The man wiped his eyes with his free arm and then resumed where he had left off before she had decided she had had enough of being a placid victim. Pushing her back against the desk, he roughly thrust his right hand beneath the hem of her skirt and between her thighs. In doing so, he lowered his gaze to check out the action, allowing a now enraged Anne to sink her teeth into his right cheek and channel all her anger into trying to bite through it. Her jaws locked and the man howled as she flung her arm around his neck and pulled him closer, determined he would not escape her already aching jaws. Just for a moment, despite his size and strength, Anne had him overpowered and was on the verge of tearing half his face off.

Through her fury and his screams of pain she heard footsteps pounding up the stairs before a second masked man burst into the room. Anne growled like a cornered animal and ground her teeth yet more tightly, encouraging further screams of rage and pain, and watched the tall, powerfully built man she had already identified as the leader of the gang take stock of the situation. He pulled a handgun from the pocket of his blue overalls as he strode across the small office towards them and then viciously grabbed a handful of Anne’s dark hair. Instinct made her bite even harder.

Then came a command in a tone that was incongruously calm and polite in such a situation: ‘Let go… Now.’

The barrel of the handgun was then placed gently against her temple. The refined delivery of the instruction made the implications of not obeying all the more menacing.

The man with the well-chewed cheek howled again as Anne delivered her final effort to make her teeth meet before letting go. For the second time in ten seconds she spat – a mixture of the man’s blood and wet fibres from his balaclava. He staggered unsteadily away from her, clutching his face, growling with his pain and anger, while keeping his eyes on the man with the gun. Anne was similarly transfixed, seeing the armed man as her saviour and seeking a message from the narrowed dark eyes staring through the slits in his olive-green balaclava. He waved the gun to indicate that she should sit in the padded leather chair behind the desk. She did as instructed, continuing to dare to look him in the eyes, scarcely able to believe how defiant she felt. Now judging her to be compliant, he turned to his injured accomplice and brutally thrust the muzzle of the gun into his injured cheek.

‘Stay here. Do not touch her again,’ he commanded in the same calm, cultured voice. He then strode from the room.

The injured man cringed like a whipped dog, leaning heavily against the wood-panelled wall of the office, cradling his damaged face in his gloved hand.

‘Not so tough now, are you?’ she sneered at her captor. ‘He’s got you shit-scared.’

Emboldened by the adrenaline that coursed through her, Anne felt anger more than fright, although her head and her heart were pounding. For the last hour she had been terrified, but now she felt inexplicably aggressive, with every emotion, nerve and sinew seemingly on high alert.

Reacting to her scorn, the man moved towards her, clearly aching to teach her a lesson, but rather than cringe away Anne felt herself bristle with rage, ready for fight not flight. But the man stopped short, glaring at her from the other side of the desk, still nursing his damaged face. She knew he would obey the man with the gun. For the time being, she was safe.

He flopped down in the hard chair that the manager of the Hardstone Building Society kept especially for his staff, when they made it past his secretary and into his office. Anne was one of the ninteen employees that all worked at its branch situated in Wednesday Market, Beverley. For her to be sitting behind the desk and in the chair of its unpopular manager, Noel Priestley, was a further novel experience. Her emotions unravelled further as she imagined the pompous little git’s reaction to the robbery and her role in it – she wanted to laugh out loud.

Footsteps mounting the stairs dragged her back to reality, and her earlier saviour, accompanied by a third masked man, entered the office. Was it only an hour ago they had led her from her home at gunpoint, leaving her husband and son bound and gagged, before using her keys to disarm the alarm and enter the building society? He was now carrying a navy blue holdall with the gun in his other hand. The third man came around the desk and took hold of Anne’s upper arm, pulling her to her feet, while the gunman motioned to Anne’s attacker to leave the office. Without a word, the four of them descended the stairs and left the building by a rear door, into a small staff car park. A heavy drizzle driven by an icy cold wind quickly soaked through Anne’s thin blouse as they walked silently towards a BMW parked in a dark corner, hiding it from the casual glance of any passerby. Anne was pushed into the rear seat and then joined by the gunman, while her attacker, still subdued and nursing his injury, climbed into the front passenger seat. The third man did the driving, pulling silently onto Lord Roberts Road and through the quiet rain-soaked streets of the market town. Within minutes, they had passed the racecourse and were heading along the A1079 towards York.

Anne no longer felt aggressive and angry. She was shivering uncontrollably, her mind a blur of panic and dread, convinced the men were now intending to kill her – dispose of the witness – after doing God knows what else to her. She knew she would never see her son and husband again and prayed they would be safe. When, about ten minutes after leaving Beverley, the car pulled into a long, dark lay-by hidden from the road by a deep stand of trees, Anne was so traumatised she could only stammer, ‘Please… no… please.’

The gunman reached down into her footwell and removed her shoes before leaning across and opening her door. He motioned her with the gun to get out of the car. Still expecting to be shot, she did as she was told and then just stood with her back to the still-open door. The door slammed shut followed by the powerful purr of the BMW and the crunch of loose gravel as it sped away.

For ten seconds, Anne Beedham did not move. Then she looked up into the sky, feeling the cold drizzle on her face. She laughed out loud as she felt the warm urine dribble down her thighs and then warming her bare feet. She hitched up her skirt and began to run. Ignoring the abrading pain of the lay-by’s gravel, she soon gained the smoother tarmac surface of the A1079 and at a steady jog headed back towards Beverley.

*

An Hour Earlier

Janice Cooper had always found the guest bedroom at her neat bungalow in the village of Atwick, near the East Yorkshire seaside town of Hornsea, to be cold. It had been added as a loft extension a few years earlier, but the builders had never warned her how cold such rooms could get, particularly facing eastwards towards the North Sea coast less than a mile away across the flat exposed farmland. It was ironic that not a single guest had ever stayed in the room, but tonight she had unwillingly become its first ever occupant, and it now seemed highly likely that she was going to die in it.

As her chest heaved with the effort of trying to keep breathing, her mind escaped to those summers back in the 1950s when her parents had taken her and her younger brother to stay at the Fresh Fields Caravan Park on the clifftops between Hornsea and Atwick, to escape the industrial grime of her native Barnsley. As her lungs burned, her mind raced forward through the years to when she eventually realised one half of her childhood dream – a bungalow near the sea. A new job at the Hardstone Building Society in Beverley, only about ten miles from the rapidly eroding but still beautiful east coast, had been the opportunity. Proudly settling into her new home at the age of thirty-five, she’d reluctantly accepted the fact that the complementary half of her dream would never be realised. Janice had never even had a steady boyfriend, let alone an offer of marriage. Janice’s work colleagues were her only real friends. They admired her stoic yet cheerful disposition, while at the same time at a loss to understand why she hadn’t attracted a man – after all, she wasn’t unattractive, albeit being what they would kindly describe as homely and comfortable. Several seemingly suitable customers had been steered, sometimes less than tactfully, towards asking her out, and despite several dates, not one had asked twice.

Janice wriggled in the hard kitchen chair, trying to relieve the cramp in her arms and shoulders. She remembered how she had gradually shrugged off the disappointment of having no one with whom to share her dreams and taken comfort in the knowledge that when the extra bedroom was finished, Mum and Dad would come to stay. She hoped that her brother and his wife and their three children would also be regular visitors. Those dreams had also shattered when her dad died of a heart attack just three weeks after the bedroom was finished and Mum had slipped effortlessly into the role of professional widow, refusing to be happy and viewing a holiday by the sea as somehow unseemly. Her brother and his family had visited her a few times after Dad died but they never stayed the night. Janice eventually accepted that his wife viewed her spinster sister-in-law and her seaside retreat as both boring and embarrassing, and only came under sufferance.

Janice wondered why, in this cruel situation, she was now allowing herself to admit how lonely and unfulfilled her life had become, constantly hiding her sadness beneath a facade of outward jollity and practicality, which her work colleagues, totally unbeknown to her, so often discussed and admired. Now faced with death, the walls she had built to protect herself suddenly crumbled, releasing the tears she thought she’d forgotten how to shed. She choked at the irony that it would be this long denied weakness that would kill her.

She felt her tears start to flow. The tape binding her wrists tightened the more she struggled to get comfortable, and her tears turned to sobs. Her sobs became frantic gasps for air and became shallower and shallower as she struggled to breathe. The thick woollen sock cruelly stuffed into her mouth and held in place by a length of broad black tape only allowed her to breathe through her nose. Not a problem for most, but as a chronic asthmatic, Janice had started to panic the moment the man forced open her mouth and rammed in the sock. Years of managing her condition enabled her to calm down when she felt sure the three men had left her house, taking with them the keys for the building society’s safe. She told herself not to panic. Panic would be fatal. But as the minutes dragged on and she grew colder and sadder, she began to wonder just how long she must sit immobile, bound, gagged and unable to breathe properly. The rain hammered onto the bedroom window driven by an onshore wind, forcing a cold draught through the cheap double-glazing, ruffling the thin net curtains, penetrating her cotton nightie and further chilling her body. Despite Janice’s best efforts to block them out, her thoughts continued to drift into the past, dredging up uncomfortable memories and emotions. After what seemed like hours since the men had forced their way into her house, those emotions brought the tears, which sparked the panic she had fought so hard to quell. That panic and the tears brought on an asthma attack that only her inhaler could now stem. Janice Cooper slowly began to suffocate. As an almost welcome haze of unconsciousness slid over her, she wondered if whoever found her body would be kind enough to lay her on the unused double bed atop the weekly laundered but also unused Laura Ashley quilt.

*

Constable Peter Granger had a lot on his mind. Married for only three months, he was convinced that his wife, PC Amy Granger, was already having an affair with her sergeant, Dave Knaggs, some fifteen years her senior. In fact, from what he had recently gleaned, albeit from a dubious source – overheard gossip between Betty the cleaner and Frank the civilian property officer – she had been in this relationship for the four years she had been on Knaggs’ shift. This was longer than he had even known her. According to Betty, Amy was a hot arse who couldn’t keep her knickers on, and she’d only married that nice PC Granger because his dad had just died and left him a house and a handsome cash sum. Apparently the affair was particularly active when her young husband was on nights. The actual eavesdropper, PC Lynne Stubbs, had relayed this verbatim conversation to him two nights previously while they shared a patrol car for a few hours of the shift. Peter had been dubious about Lynne’s motives in disclosing this shocking news from the outset. Known as the station bike, Lynne had tried to ensnare him when he was a naïve new probationer only two years earlier, and he had tactfully rebuffed her in favour of Amy. Her probity as a witness had suffered a further setback when within ten minutes of breaking the news of his wife’s infidelity she had offered him a blow job as a means of comfort!

Not wanting to believe it, Pete had spent the last two nights at work in an agony of doubt, unable to dispel the image of his Amy at this very moment getting shagged by Knaggs. In their new bed. In their brand-new, detached, four-bedroom Barratt show home. He had to find out the truth.

He resolved to do it now, while it was quiet. The radio was dead, the drizzle and the cold wind having quietened Beverley even earlier than usual. He’d venture off his car beat, nip home and catch them. He’d not worked out what he would do if he caught them – but Amy was always nagging him to be more spontaneous.

‘Control to PC Granger, PC Granger, are you receiving?’ the radio demanded.

‘Bollocks,’ he swore. Sod’s law. He intended to ignore the message and wait until they called someone else.

‘Control to PC Granger, PC Granger.’

Despite himself, he reached for his radio – a Pavlovian response after four years of police service.

‘PC Granger receiving. Go ahead.’

‘PC Granger, straight away to the phone box on the A1079 in Bishop Burton village. A Mrs Anne Beedham is waiting for you there. She reports being taken from her home in Dunswell at gunpoint and being forced to help rob the Hardstone Building Society, where she works. More information to follow.’

Already driving at speed towards the location, PC Peter Granger forgot his personal problems. Guns and robbery? In Beverley?

‘On my way. Do we know if the offenders are still in the area?’

‘She reports her three attackers have driven off in a dark BMW 5 series towards York. You are safe to approach.’

The criminal use of a firearm in these parts was as rare as rocking-horse shit, and on a rainy night in December, nothing much was happening anywhere. So this radio message woke up every keen copper who even had a sniff of getting in on the action.

As Pete Granger sped towards Bishop Burton, he heard another officer being dispatched, to the home of the woman he was en route to meet. The officer was told he would there find her husband and son bound and gagged in an upstairs front bedroom. An ambulance was also en route. Traffic units patrolling near the A1079 were directed to search for a dark BMW 5 series containing three armed men. With no audible sign of irony, the controller explained that at least one of the men was carrying a handgun and that these unarmed officers should take care. It still amazed him how most police officers rushed towards anything that was remotely exciting – even if dangerous. The nearest of the two armed response units covering the force was deployed, but it was currently in East Hull, miles away from ever being able to confront the BMW before unarmed officers, if it should be sighted.

The next call directed a Hornsea-based officer, PC Harry Willis, to The Bungalow, Cliff Lane, Atwick in the same urgent but quietly controlled tone.

‘PC Willis, we are told we have another female victim at this address. Janice Cooper, forty-five years. Our information is that she is severely asthmatic and may be bound and gagged. We are organising an ambulance and another unit is en route from Bridlington.’

Granger imagined the collective groan as units heard that Windy Willis was being sent on such an urgent task. In his mid-forties and massively overweight, Willis was the classic uniform carrier, off work sick more than he attended – and bloody useless when he did.

‘PC Willis to control, I was out of my car on foot, so it will take me fifteen, that’s one five, fifteen minutes. How do we know the armed men haven’t gone back there?’

Everyone listening knew he would be spinning it out, hoping someone would get there before him. Out of the car? He never got out of the car – only to get fish and chips.

‘PC Willis, attend as quickly as possible and effect immediate entry to the house. Do not wait for backup. The offenders were last seen heading towards York… now put your foot down!’ Even the controller twenty miles away in Hull had got the measure of PC Willis.

*

Harry Willis rarely left the security of the streetlights of Hornsea when he was working nights – and he did his utmost to avoid night shifts. In the job for twenty-five years but frightened by its demands, he longed for his pension that was still five years away. Following an acrimonious divorce and painful separation from his two teenage children, he had fallen into depression, taking long periods of sickness. He’d piled on the weight and lost all interest in police work, and life in general. He took every opportunity to take as much time off sick as possible – especially on nights – using the classic skiver’s excuses of back pain, upset stomach and flu. His supervisors were closely monitoring his sickness, so not every set of nights could be avoided. So here he was, alone, at almost three in the morning, driving through drizzle and a coastal fog in the pitch-black towards God knows what. He just hoped that the ambulance crew would get there first, and to help make that happen, he drove at barely thirty miles an hour down the deserted country roads.

Harry knew where he was going. He’d been to the bungalow before. About two months previously, Janice Cooper had reported a suspicious caller, efficiently recording his car number and description. By the time Harry had arrived, the man had long gone, but over a cup of tea she had passed the information over to Harry, even though she could see he was completely disinterested. He’d spent about an hour with Janice chatting over a cup of tea, recognising the similarities in their lonely lives but at the same time envious of her outward optimism and friendly nature. Harry had momentarily felt ashamed of his own gloom and mean-spirited nature, which he knew his work colleagues despised and ridiculed behind his back. By the time he left the bungalow, that envy had turned to dislike for the jolly outgoing spinster and he had stereotyped her as a nervous nosey parker, not worthy of his help. He made no further enquiries about the man and the car, writing the incident off as a non-event and including only a vague description of the man on the incident log.

However, whatever else he was, PC Willis was not stupid and as he drove towards the bungalow, his mind made the potential connection between the suspicious man and tonight’s obviously serious events, and he began to worry. She was just the type to mention the man and his car – and he’d taken no action. He slowed down further and tried to think, but Atwick was only a five-minute drive and all too quickly he was outside the bungalow.

Harry knew he couldn’t just sit there, so switching on his torch he stepped out into the mist and drizzle and approached the house, frightened by the dark, the isolation and what he might find – and how he may well be in deep shit. He’d been told to force an entry if necessary but knew his fat backside would not pass through any of the double glazed windows, even if he smashed one, so he tried the back door. Trembling with apprehension, he shook the handle, fully expecting it to be secure but the door opened, almost causing him to fall into the opening. The house was in darkness and totally silent. He shone his torch through the doorway to reveal a small, neat kitchen. Now almost desperate to hear the ambulance approaching, he stood still and listened. Silence.

‘PC 1471 Willis to control, I’m at the scene and the house is insecure. I am about to go in.’

Still afraid but rationalising that there was probably no one in the bungalow but a bound and gagged middle-aged woman, PC Willis transferred his torch to his left hand and took his ASP from its belt pouch and with a swift downward flick of his wrist extended the weapon. Peering into the kitchen, he spotted a light switch within reach. A fluorescent tube fizzed and flickered overhead before starkly illuminating the room, making Harry brave enough to shout.

‘Hello. Anyone there? This is the police and I’m coming in.’

With that, he stepped over the threshold, ASP raised as if he were the SAS about to storm an enemy stronghold.

Having committed himself to action, he moved quickly through the kitchen, finding himself in a narrow hallway off which he first found a small bathroom wedged beneath the stairs. Empty. He moved further into the house, knocking down two switches that lit up the hall and the upstairs landing. Quick glances into the front room and two downstairs bedrooms left only the upstairs to check. He cautiously climbed the stairs. As his head became level with the upstairs landing floor, he looked to his right between the spindles of the banister and through an open door into the only room. A bright security light from outside diffused through the thin curtains, creating a silhouette of what Harry had been led to expect. Janice Cooper was sitting on a dining chair, directly facing the open door. Her head and shoulders were slumped so far forward towards her knees that without her restraining bonds, she would have fallen forward off the chair. Harry exhaled his pent-up breath in an involuntary gesture of relief as he realised not only that he was in no danger but also that his failure to investigate Mrs Cooper’s suspicious caller would not now be exposed, as the woman was clearly dead.

Well practised at watching his own back while avoiding work, his immediate thoughts were about how he would be able to look good by suggesting the suspicious caller could be connected to tonight’s events. There would be no Mrs Cooper to throw a spanner in the works. He gave not one passing thought to either the fate of the poor woman, how his developing plan might actually damage any future investigation, or even consider that if the two events were actually connected, he had failed in his duties to record an accurate description of the suspect or his car.

Feeling much more confident, he moved on up the stairs and into the bedroom and put on the light, taking in the tape used to bind Janice Cooper to the chair. Even a lazy copper has seen plenty of dead bodies in twenty-five years’ service and a good proportion are in strange, suspicious and downright weird scenarios, so Harry was unmoved by the presence of the body. He felt at the neck for a pulse to confirm life extinct, as it wouldn’t be the first time a copper had been in the presence of a body only to find it was no such thing – and it wasn’t the last – Harry felt a weak but definite pulse.

Ten years of trying to avoid police work were forgotten and PC Willis went into autopilot. He tore the tape from Janice’s mouth and moved to clear her airway, finding the sock and throwing it to the floor. He scrambled for the Swiss Army knife on his equipment belt and cut through the tape, actually thinking about the forensic potential of fingerprints, hairs and fibres from the criminals adhering to the tape. He laid her gently on the bed, tilted back her head and began mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.

By the time two ambulance staff were running up the stairs, Janice had regained consciousness, and as they carried her out of the house, PC Harry Willis sat on the bed, grinning. He felt better about himself than he had done for years.

Two

10:30 That Same Morning

‘This is a fantastic opportunity, Darnley. We cannot afford to let it pass. A middle-aged uniformed police officer saving the life of a similarly aged female in the dead of night. It’s community policing in action,’ Chief Constable Miles Crabbe enthused.

Community policing – the Chief was on his usual soapbox and once again I marvelled at how his enthusiasm never waned, even though he must know that I was thinking he was talking crap. But he was invigorated by his own credo, his bug-like eyes wide and his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down in time with the nods of his head. Crabbe was a firm believer that enthusiasm was like the clap – highly contagious – and if he